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Success Quotes

There are not many famous names on this page. Shakespeare leads, then Steve Maraboli and Emerson, and most of the authors appear only once. The quotes with real citations are more interesting than the motivational ones: James Richardson’s “Success is whatever humiliation everyone has agreed to compete for” (Vectors, 2001), or Jean Ingelow in 1886 observing that if one cannot have success, the next most agreeable thing is failure.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” is credited to Churchill almost everywhere it appears. No source has been found. One of the places it shows up is a 2003 book, with none given. It is on the Courage page too, with the same flag.

Random quote on Success

Most quoted on success:

Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.

Tom Peters The Little Big Things: 163 Ways To Pursue Excellence (2010)

The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill.

Robert Heller Robert Heller cited in : Jonathon Green (1984)

Don't believe your own b.s. It's real easy to confuse funding with success.

Steve Blank

Success is when you see something, and you say, 'I want to do that,' and then you do it. It's being happy with what you do and doing what you love every day.

Alessia Cara Alessia Cara in 2016: 'I'm here to make music (2016)

Man's mettle is tested both in adversity and in success. Twice is this true of the soul of a nation.

Soong Mei-ling Address to the U.S. House of Representatives (1943)

Success doesn't just happen. It is as a result of years of learning and training.

Lucy Quist

Unwise or unlucky wizards learned fast enough how much one paid for one’s mistakes. One sometimes paid more dearly for one’s successes.

Jay Lake The Decaying Mansions of Memory (2011)

The role of the government will remain a facilitating one, as the success of Namibia’s economic ambitions depends on collaborative efforts across sectors.

Selma Ashipala-Musavyi

It's amazing to close off a season like that and celebrate a bit of success. It feels really special to get that award.

Kayla Reyneke

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all..

Friedrich Nietzsche The Gay Science (1882)

Throughout our history the success of the homemaker has been but another name for the up-building of the nation.

Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900)

It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.

Terry Pratchett Equal Rites (1987)

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

Lily Tomlin

I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness.
I raise up in stern invasion the standard of the strong!

Anton LaVey The Satanic Bible (1969)

Choose the positive. — You have choice — you are master of your attitude — choose the POSITIVE, the CONSTRUCTIVE. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.

Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts (2000)

Success depends on three things: who says it, what he says, how he says it; and of these three things, what he says is the least important.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn Recollections (1917)

It's nothing to do with us at all, our success is due to the taste of the public.

Bon Scott

To have success in science, you need some luck.
But to succeed in science, you need a lot more than luck.

James D. Watson Succeeding in Science: Some Rules of Thumb (1993)

In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?

Jessamyn West

No longer can I complain that the unrighteous man reaches the highest pinnacle of success. He is raised aloft that he may be hurled down in more headlong ruin.

Claudian

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